Impending Loss
by Monet
Summary: Five years in the making, a hero is born...through the eyes of one Watcher


TITLE: "Impending Loss"  
  
SPOILERS: "The Gift"  
  
DISCLAIMER: As much as I want to, I take no credit for this character and all those that are included in this fic. I also take no credit in the best episode to date, "The Gift."   
  
DEDICATION: To all my RPing friends and The Family...   
  
  
Do you ever wonder what a hero entails?  
  
It's quite simple really... Well, maybe in books and myths it is. But if you've ever met one, it's quite a complicated mixture of courage, heart, and mind.  
  
I had all those once. Oh, no...not IN me. I'm far from being a hero. Some might argue that I have saved lives in the past. But saving lives doesn't make you a hero to the level I am speaking about tonight.  
  
Tonight I HAD all those components - but within a courageous young woman I had the honor of getting to know, getting to watch over, getting to love as a daughter.  
  
Did I expect for this day to come?  
  
Quite frequently, actually. There were days where I had this dreaded feeling of impending loss. Those days were easier in the beginning. I was a Council's Watcher through and through when I first met her. My feelings for her were nothing but seeing as they see the other girls: just instruments in the war of good and evil.  
  
Instruments come and go.   
  
I found this instrument to be stubborn, childish, and did not deal well with figures of authority. She wanted a social life in school, in friends, in dating - I didn't think that was an intelligent course of taking.  
  
But I soon found this instrument to be clever, determined, and passionate. I began to see past her physical poweress to what she was within. I began to see past her being an instrument of war and to see her as a teenager, a girl, a human.  
  
And I wanted more than to just protect her for the good of mankind.  
  
Whether or not I made any impact on her is something only she would know. For me, she opened me up to things I didn't think I was capable of as my role to her. I didn't think her words, her thoughts meant anything in the plan to reign victorious. I was her authority figure; only I could tell her how to act and what to do.  
  
But she quickly taught me that it wasn't so. Our victories were just that: OURS. She never totally shut me out. Like I learned with her, she learned to respect my say.  
  
Not to say we haven't had our bouts of disagreements. Not to say she never made a mistake in her choices. Not to say I didn't, either.  
  
We both found out the other does make mistakes. And those mistakes could be forgotten, if not forgiven.  
  
I chuckle at the thought.  
  
But I also feel this heavy pressure in my chest. Because that feeling of impending loss was unbareable by then. So unbearable, I could barely think straight.  
  
When that spear entered into my body, I knew what was coming for us all. I felt ashamed to even think for a moment that I wished to be dead before she.  
  
But I lived. For her. I lived for her to continue to fight. The world relies on her to protect it. I am the one assigned to protect the protector.  
  
I could not let her down.  
  
I killed for her that day. I did. I took out an innocent. And without remorse.  
  
And still without it.  
  
She knew what had to be done. She sarificed her own life - as she has in the past - to allow her sister to live. To allow us all to live. I have always known it was in her.  
  
She embraced her role in life.   
  
And she did it gracefully, as she always has.  
  
The world continues to revolve. I continue to breathe. I continue to see the world. I see that no one knows the sacrifice made by that hero, say those that were close to her.  
  
Impending loss. It happened. And I wept.  
  
I do hope she knew I wept.   
  
We never said "good-bye." I was lucky enough to let her know how proud I was of her. But I never said "good-bye."  
  
So what does a hero entail?  
  
Look into the life of Buffy Anne Summers, and the answer is all there...  
  



End file.
